EVER SINCE I KNEW MYSELF

Dir. Maka Gogaladze | 2024 | 85 min | Formo (Georgia) | U

A personal journey in the changing landscape of post-Soviet society. The director, in intimate dialogue with her mother, explores female relationships of two generations. Her mother is a math teacher who emphasized the meaning of structure and discipline in child-rearing, while director Maka Gogaladze remembers seven of her childhood years with horror, when she was forced to learn to play the piano to the point of tears. Their perspectives and experiences differ, but they are united by love. The conversations are interwoven with fitting, sometimes humorous, contemporary scenes from the director’s journeys through Georgia’s music, dance and sports schools. Places reminiscent of a time machine, prompting memories of her own childhood experiences. A film as a transformative journey that began in the Soviet Union and continues in independent Georgia.

A wide network of children’s music schools was developed across the Soviet Union, reflecting the state’s emphasis on arts and culture as a foundation of ideological education and social development. This musical education system was mostly preserved after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the various countries evolving in different directions. In Georgia the emphasis was on the inclusion of the nation’s folk traditions into the educational content of these schools.

In Georgian with subtitles in Latvian and English.